


lion and phoenix

by tsunderestorm



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:41:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22652668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsunderestorm/pseuds/tsunderestorm
Summary: Of two things he is certain: one, he is Glenn Fraldarius, former (current) knight of what was once the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, now the United Kingdom of Fodlan. He was knighted at age fifteen, the youngest in the kingdom’s history, and today those vows are to be renewed.Two, he is in love with Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, and that’s why he’s come back. For the little lion cub he’d nearly died defending, for the king that little lion had grown into and the man that he will become.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Glenn Fraldarius
Comments: 6
Kudos: 99





	lion and phoenix

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was written for [Casey](twitter.com/eggyankee), whose feverish dimiglenn brainworms cannot be controlled and deserve to be fed. Glenn’s poor memory and scarred/disabled right hand are entirely based on her headcanons for him post-duscur!
> 
> This turned out to be significantly less porn and significantly more feeling and character exploration, but regardless... I hope you enjoy!
> 
>  **EDIT** : Casey drew some [absolutely lovely art](https://twitter.com/eggyankee/status/1228818484529913856?s=21) for this, and I couldn't be more touched!! If you loved this fic, make sure to go and let Casey know how amazing her artwork is!

It is the Wyvern Moon, and what few wyverns are left in Fhirdiad are soaring south. Glenn has seen them out his window, long, serpentine bodies steaming as their searing scales meet the icy northern wind. They cut through the clouds like knives, like dark splotches of ink on fresh parchment.

Sitting at his dressing table, he’s trying to perfect the image of a knight, trying to find the beauty and skill under the tired-eyed specter that he’s become, a sliver of what once was. The knight he’d squired for had once told him _you’ve a face that would send a man to war and swordsmanship that could end it_. Glenn hasn’t seen that face for years, not since Duscur, not since he’d bled, burned and borne blistering pain.

There are bags under his eyes no matter how much he sleeps, and the scar ripping down his face and neck and disappearing into the collar of his gambeson is angry, jagged, the skin pulled puffy-tight where Thoron had seared it raw. How is he to make a sculpture of the block of decaying marble he’s become? To take the broken building blocks that Dimitri had pulled from a cottage near the Duscur border and piece them together? How is a patchwork puzzle fit for the Savior King of Faerghus? Sure, Glenn can take a broken man and put back his parts, cradle Dimitri’s head in his hands and whisper _calm, little lion_ like a lullaby, but when it comes to himself, to making sense of the fog and the misplaced memories, he’s finding himself lost..

Of two things he is certain: one, he is Glenn Fraldarius, former (current) knight of what was once the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, now the United Kingdom of Fodlan. He was knighted at age fifteen, the youngest in the kingdom’s history, and today those vows are to be renewed.

Two, he is in love with Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, and that’s why he’s come back. For the little lion cub he’d nearly died defending, for the king that little lion had grown into and the man that he will become.

Beneath his light armor, he’s wearing Fraldarius teal, a tunic that’s more decorative than purposeful. It’s carefully stitched and tailored perfectly to the lines of his body, and it must have cost a fortune. He has a cloak made of royal blue crafted by the finest seamstress in Fhirdiad, a lion embroidered in opulent gold gleaming on it like a treasure. A custom-crafted, precious metal brooch sits on the tabletop, patiently waiting its turn to grace his throat: a golden lion with a sparkling sapphire eye.

 _A gift_ , Dimitri had said, as he’d placed it into Glenn’s hands. _From a Blaiddyd to his Fraldarius,_ knowing full well the weight of those words. This was not the gift of a king to a knight in his service, not even his personal guard. It wasn’t even the gift of one friend to another, for the way Dimitri’s fingers had paused over Glenn’s body spoke volumes, stroking the juncture of neck and throat where it would gather the folds of a cloak in its delicate paws.

Dimitri has seen him outfitted in the finest of clothes, cloaks in every fabric he desires and furs from every animal he could possibly think of, the finest of boots, tunics and trousers befitting his noble status. Glenn would think himself a doll, a trophy, were Dimitri not so obviously in awe of him the way he’s been since he was a child prince meeting the boy who was his birthright...

“Glenn…?” that very same birthright asks from the doorway, the bulk of his body muting the candlelight from the torches lining the hall outside Glenn’s bedchamber. 

“Are you feeling well? Here I thought I’d find you already splendidly dressed and posing in front of your mirror.”

At his core, Glenn knows the sight of him speaks for himself. No, he is not well. His cloak and sword belt are thrown haphazardly on the bed (forsaken or forgotten, he isn’t sure which) and his hair falls loose and long down the aching line of his back, over his shoulders and into his tired-eyed face. Palm-up on the table, his once-envied sword hand is a sad, sorry thing. Discolored, a bruise that will not heal, a jagged webbing of scars and phantom pain, nerves that were sizzled raw ten years ago aching.

Superficial worries, of course, but worries nonetheless. No one would ever deny that Glenn Fraldarius was once the vainest knight in the kingdom. Still, he makes an attempt at lying… for Dimitri’s sake.

“Of course I am well, little lion,” he coos, raising the timbre of his voice the way Dimitri likes to hear: sing-song, soothing, the same voice he likes whispered in his ear when Glenn is beneath him, hands at his nape, holding him tight, singing his praises.

Dimitri crosses the threshold and closes the door behind him, the velvet of his cape a whisper against the stone floor. His footsteps are slow but purposeful, heavy in their ornamental sabatons. He stops when he’s standing behind Glenn in his chair, pausing for a moment before his hands come to rest on Glenn’s shoulders, a welcome weight.

“I must ask that you please tell me the truth,” he pleads, clawed armor-clad fingertips brushing through Glenn’s hair while he explains, “I am no longer the childish prince to whom you could lie with no consequences. I know that something is bothering you.”

Glenn laughs, “You make it sound like I made a habit of lying to you… I was nothing but honest, little lion.”

Dimitri gives him a look that is equal parts playful disapproval and utter adoration. “We both know that to be untrue. Oh, the secrets you must have kept from me in your vastly superior older years… still, though. I am… your lover, and you my beloved… and if you are hurting, I wish to know.”

They make quite a pair: Glenn, with his scarred face and bags beneath his tired eyes that he doubts will ever vanish, and Dimitri, with the scar-puckered hollow of his missing right eye beneath the ornamental eyepatch he’s chosen to match his cloak. He owes him this much, he tells himself, guilt ponderous and leaden as armor in deep waters: a downward drag to drowning.

Glenn relents. “I suppose I worry about how people will receive me,” he says flippantly, playing it off with, “I’m not exactly the shining, splendid model of physical perfection any longer.”

There is barely a flutter of breath between seconds before Dimitri answers, “Nor am I.”

Glenn despises being proven wrong. He’s always been stubborn and arrogant and even a decade of tragedies have done little to humble him. Still, his golden lion is right, and the pair they make in his mirror, pretty as a painted portrait… hasn’t it always been meant to be? As sure as the moon pulls the shore-kissed tide back out the sea, as sure as the sun rises gleaming and golden in the East and retires blushing in the West, as sure as the seasons and as final as death, he is Dimitri’s.

“My lion… you are right. It’s simply… well, I suppose I’m a bit vain and I’m not exactly fond of how I’ll look.”

“Is your cloak not to your liking?” Dimitri asks with a smile, trying to lift the mood as he lifts the elegant cape from where it’s been unceremoniously tossed at the foot of the bed. Gently, he moves to drape it around his knight’s shoulders but pauses, meeting Glenn’s eyes in the mirror as something devilish takes hold in his gaze. “Would you prefer mine?”

Glenn barks out a laugh, sardonic and sharp as a blade. “I can hardly wear the king’s personal cloak for my social re-introduction,” he says sarcastically. His words are a bit of an exaggeration… this whole ceremony isn’t that, not truly, but… it is that, more or less. When one lives in a secluded village for ten years with little to no knowledge of one’s history and no clue to it except ripped pieces of a cloak the exact shade of Fraldarius teal, skin blemished with blisters from Thoron and no memory of the ability to cast it, there are certain rules that must be followed upon one’s reintroduction to the court, he supposes.

Dimitri leans down, pressing a kiss to Glenn’s neck just above his collar. “So be it, but thank the goddess that you are to wear my colors. I would prefer you in my cloak, though, and nothing else.”

“The years have made you bold,” Glenn quips, smiling as he leans into the touch, eyelids heavy. Half-vision paints the mirror into a dream world, muted blues and blacks, splotchy and obscure. Still, he chides, “But you’ll make us late for the ceremony.”

Dimitri removes his gauntlets and, with bare hands hungry for the luxuriant caress of precious silk, gathers Glenn’s long hair to tie it back with a simple piece of leather. Satisfied, he tucks a strand behind Glenn’s ear when the man turns to face him. 

“ _Love_ has made me bold. And… I am the king now,” Dimitri says, draping the royal blue cape asymmetrically around Glenn’s shoulders as he stands. Artfully arranged, he pins it with the gifted aureate lion, making a valiant attempt not to notice how blown Glenn’s pupils are, lusty black in his eerie icy eyes. How with the spread of one hand he could hold that perfect, elegant jaw still as he devours his mouth, how Glenn in the cloak of _his_ kingdom is somehow more lewd than any of the countless times he’s seen Glenn’s nude body.

Dimitri teases, “If I wanted, I could cancel the ceremony altogether and keep my knight to myself,” but they both know he won’t. He is not that kind of king, not that kind of man. “Perhaps, even with the ceremony, there may still yet be time-“

“Down, little lion,” Glenn scolds, rebuffing Dimitri’s path skimming fingers down his sides, halting the man’s intent to circle his waist to cup his ass. His body calls out for the attention (goddess, was he always this _starved_?) but Dimitri has advisors who will come in search of him if he tarries too long, and the idea of someone, _anyone_ , finding them in a compromising tangle on Glenn’s un-slept-in bed is… less than ideal. 

With that, he takes his sword belt from Dimitri’s outstretched hand and buckles it at his waist. The blade against his right thigh is unfamiliar, an obtrusive weight that tastes like ash and blood, the sharp tang of failure. 

“Come, my lion,” he says, turning on his heel with a flip of his hair, and Dimitri follows. 

\--

(In the Great Hall, there is a memory. He is fifteen, and he is a prodigy. The hilt of each blade they thrust into his hands fits as it should: easy, comfortable, a perfect fit. He was born for this purpose, bred for this proficiency, and he knows it. Half of Faerghus wants to be him, the youngest noble ever knighted... the other half wants to feel his practiced hands on their body, just once. He’ll have bards writing ballads to his bravery by the time he’s seen the first moon of his sixteenth year, and the little Prince he’s meant to guard looks at him as if the sun rises in a glowing halo directly from him.)

In reality, he is twenty-nine, and he is a broken thing. But… Dimitri has been broken too. Perhaps together they can put back all of their parts, and it’s to that future towards which he walks, as he has always walked.

(In his foggy memory, the grand hall at the capital’s palace is full to bursting with nobles, with every knight who he’s knocked to the ground in shame and every squire green-eyed with envy that he has risen so fast, and all for him. For _Glenn Fraldarius_. He’s living for the attention, and were he not on his best behavior, he’d challenge them all to a duel, one after the other, just to _really_ give them a show, to prove anyone who still harbors doubts that he is deserving.)

Today, the court has been thinned by the war. Today Sylvain is there in his father’s place, the Margrave too ill to make the long journey to Fhirdiad and all the better for it, besides. Felix is there beside him, the newly laureled Duke of Fraldarius since the untimely death of their father. Ingrid is there, his once upon a time fiancée, freshly knighted herself, a lover with the voice of a songbird defected from the empire on her arm. There are countless courtiers, peasants who spared him supplies when the war stretched them scarce, a man he understands to be the new king of Almyra and Dimitri’s close friend, an enigmatic Academy professor turned Archbishop who speaks very little and whose face reveals even less.

(Ten-year-old Dimitri bids him kneel on the dais and whispers _Glenn_ , the name tumbling from cherubic lips. How he smiles, then, a blush creeping onto his cheeks, a flush born of the crush that Glenn _knows_ he’s harboring. Dimitri is too young for such things, but Glenn wonders what the future may hold. It’s expected, even if it’s unwritten: the way that King Lambert and Glenn’s father make eyes at each other as their sons swear a vow speaks volumes.)

“May I present my personal knight,” Dimitri announces from his throne, gesturing with his hand to Glenn standing at his side. “Sir Glenn Fraldarius was knighted by me under the rule of my father, King Lambert, and though presumed dead after giving his life in service at the Tragedy at Duscur, the goddess has blessed us with his return.”

There’s a fondness in there that makes Glenn’s pulse quicken, makes him feel like he could crawl out of his skin with want for this man. He bows as expected; first to the crowd and then to Dimitri, stepping backwards so he faces him and fighting every urge to fist his scarred hand in the hem of his robe to hide it. 

“Kneel, Glenn,” Dimitri says, and Glenn makes sure he meets Dimitri’s eye as he takes a knee. He imagines kneeling for him, taking him in his hand, his mouth, feeling the weight of him the way he’s done countless times since Dimitri had found him in that cottage in the woods and cemented a promise made before they were even born. 

(Calmly, lovingly, Dimitri asks, _Do you swear to love, serve and, if called upon, defend the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus and all of her people against any malevolent forces? To abide by the knights’ code as so dictated by the Church of Seiros?_

Glenn does, and he will. He has no choice, really, but the lack of autonomy doesn’t cage him the way it does Felix… rather, he likes it: the promise of being needed, the adoration and acclaim yet to come.

Dimitri asks _, Do you swear to abandon all self-serving interests and devote yourself solely to service of the Crown?_

Yes, yes, yes. _The Crown_ , the omnipresent royal _we_ that encompasses His Royal Majesty King Lambert, Her Royal Majesty and Crown Consort, Queen Patricia of Enbarr, and their perfect son: His Royal Highness, Prince Dimitri. Glenn has the weight of Faerghus on his shoulders, a legacy that Rodrigue has carried the same as he’s carried the torch for the King, Glenn will protect the Crown at the cost of his own life, if need be… but he is to be Dimitri’s, and he will not forget that.)

Dimitri rises to his feet, a towering presence above him. “Do you swear to love, serve and, if called upon, defend not only the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, but all of united Fodlan and all of her people against any malevolent forces?”

“I do,” Glenn says, and the first press of the sword’s blunt side on his shoulder feels like another of Dimitri’s kisses, heavy-handed and near-bruising, just the way he likes.

“Do you swear to abandon all self-serving interests and devote yourself solely to service of your King?” Dimitri asks, and the break from tradition does not go unnoticed. Glenn looks up, up the graceful muscle of Dimitri’s legs to the junction of his thighs, to the cock that is _his_ , up his taut belly and chest coated in flaxen hair, all the way to his face, where an emotion he knows well is waiting in Dimitri’s single eye. 

It’s _hunger_ , and the press of the ceremonial blade on his other shoulder sears like a brand.

Looking down at him, Dimitri speaks slowly, level and eloquent. “You knelt before the Throne once years ago as Glenn Fraldarius, son of Rodrigue Achille, the Duke Fraldarius… but today, you are once again _Sir_ Glenn Fraldarius, Knight to the United Kingdom of Fodlan. Rise, m- Sir Glenn.”

 _My beloved_ almost tumble-trips off the edge of his tongue, and Glenn rises, comes face to face with his little lion cub who is full-grown, now, war torn and battle ravaged, broken and reforged with gold.

The court claps for Glenn’s second coming, a rebirth. He is something fantastical; a phoenix in the company of a lion, immolating himself in the flames of carnage and war and cleansed by the thunder only to rise back to life at the behest of his king. 

They clap for Glenn’s return, his loyal service, his devotion… but as Dimitri’s icy eye bores into his own and stokes the fires lighting his blood aflame, they are clapping for his lust. They are clapping for the unbridled ferocity with which it churns in their trophy knight and the hunger that claws at their king’s soul, the desperation that could break a door down.

—

“Glenn,” Dimitri says, lowly, catching Glenn’s wrist as he turns to retreat to the crowd’s fringes when the banquet has dragged on too long for his liking. All it takes is one word from his lion to calm him, proud face but pleading voice: “Stay.”

—

Dimitri repeats it when Glenn escorts him to his bedchamber, ever at his side even when the hall is devoid of its usual posted guards.

“Stay.” He whispers it into Glenn’s hair as he presses him against the stone beside the door, a formality when Glenn has slept in the suite of rooms Dimitri had ordered prepared for him perhaps once since they won the war and returned to the castle.

“Stay with me,” Dimitri whispers as he’s lacing his fingers through Glenn’s burned ones, pressing them together against the stone above his head. His kisses smell like overripe berries and longing on Glenn’s cheek, his neck, leaving honeyed-wine spots on his skin.

“Stay,” he says, as he’s sliding a knee between Glenn’s legs, as the undeniable press of his cock finds it way against Glenn’s, “I find myself unable to be apart from you.”

They are not apart, not for long. 

Tumbling into the room with Glenn lifted around Dimitri’s waist, they are a tangle of tongues and teeth and something that’s been building since Dimitri found Glenn at his dressing table hours earlier. His hand pulls at Glenn’s hair in a frenzy to take it down from its tie, send it tumbling in inky black waves that he can grab greedy handfuls of. 

Dimitri strips Glenn of his cloak and with it, his insecurities, laying him down on the bed atop Dimitri’s discarded cloak. 

Glenn is so small, naught but a sliver of Dimitri’s bulk, a splash of scarred, bare skin on Blaiddyd royal blue. Dimitri kisses each of Glenn’s ruined fingers, fingers that once held a sword and now can barely hold his king’s in any grip worth mentioning, sucks the damaged tips like they hold the elixir to life. 

He drags Glenn’s hands to his chest, the v of his hips, his long, thick cock... anywhere he can get them, and almost cries at the feel of them. He’s cried enough, Glenn’s little lion man, and just as he did during the war when his lover had found him not-a-ghost Glenn kisses him quiet, murmurs _I’m here_ _now._

Dimitri lays beside him and runs his fingers along each of Glenn’s scars from forehead to thigh for the hundredth time, or maybe the thousandth, bleeding his guilt out with tender touches and furrowed brow. _You did this for me,_ his fingers say, and Glenn’s answer _I’d do it again._

Absolved, Dimitri presses Glenn down into the mattress and picks him apart piece by piece, fingers him slick and easy until his easy, sultry confidence is a broken and desperate thing, until his voice is airy and clipped and his gentle suggestions come out in a staccato rhythm. He makes love to him like a man half starved, clutching at him like he’ll vanish through his fingers again like smoke. 

“ _I love you_ ,” Glenn pants as Dimitri fucks him with a fervor that will amuse Glenn until the end of his days… now, so many moons away from the cold, cold night he’d lost his virginity in a ramshackle cottage on the woods yet still so eager, pawing at Glenn like he’s hungry for a taste of what he hasn’t yet gotten. It’s fractured, a heartfelt proclamation so out of place when Dimitri has him flipped over onto his belly, down on his elbows and spread wide for Dimitri to fuck him wider still. 

Fucked half out of his mind and content in Dimitri’s arms, Glenn murmurs, “I love you, little lion,” and then sighs, “I don’t remember if I told you.”

“Yes,” Dimitri says, pulling Glenn against his chest and running fingers through the sweat-tangled spill of his hair. “Yes, Glenn, my beloved. You did, and I love you so deeply I feel my heart might burst.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am [tsunderestorm](twitter.com/tsunderestorm) on twitter. ♥


End file.
